One hates to make political hay out of this, but when you come down to it, why would anybody follow an institution's say-so on matters sexual, when its head and spokesman swept the rape of children under the rug? One might plead false equivalency between child rape and homosexual marriage, but then one might also plead that the Church's (an specifically this Pope's) past action on child-rape indicates a general, oh, I don't know, "wrong-headedness" about the broader topic of human sexuality.